Original subtitles

This film is not for judges.

It addresses friends known and unknown that our work brings us,

and who are the only reason for us to be poets,

a true attack on modesty,

since being a poet means publicly confiding one's secrets,

better to speak out loud in our sleep.

That is why the film will search those who read the figures,

who go to the trouble of reading the figures,

a task the spirit despises

but the heart performs with remarkable facility.

I have too often advised young filmmakers to use 16 mm

without taking the risk myself.

Moreover, I find that amateurs

are often tempted by the technique of professionals.

Being a professionaI, I wanted to make an amateur film

without burdening myself with any rules.

One day, one shall regret having been too precise

and artists will try to provoke intentionally

the accidents that chance provides.

That will be the difficult moment.

The Kodachrome counter-type has its own way to transform colors

and in the most unaccepted manner.

One must accept that it somehow creates something

like the interpretation of a painter.

One must also accept the surprises.

We face a machine that invents.

What I show is not what I want

but that which the machine and chemicaI baths want.

It's a different world

in which one must forget the world one inhabits.

Villa Santo Sospir belongs to Madame Alec Weissweiller.

It dominates Cape Santo Sospir,

the last point on the map

before arriving at Cape Ferrat.

The villa is situated on the road to the lighthouse,

and its rocks descend to the sea.

It looks out on Antibes, Cannes, Nice,

and to the right, Villefranche where I have lived a long time.

Here is the new lighthouse. Its scaffolding is still up,

and it resembles Piranese architecture in style.

When I stayed at Santo Sospir in the summer of 1950

I hastily decorated a wall.

Matisse told me that if you decorate one wall,

you should do the others as well. He was right.

Picasso opened and closed all the doors.

All that was left to do was to paint the doors.

That is what I tried to do.

But the doors lead into rooms.

The rooms have walls.

And if the doors are painted the walls have an empty look.

I spent the entire summer of 1950 working on ladders.

An old Italian worker prepared my pigments,

immersed in fresh milk.

A young woman lives at Santo Sospir.

I didn't need to dress the walls.

I had to draw on their surface.

That's why I made line frescoes,

with a few colors that echo tattoo art.

Santo Sospir is a tattooed villa.

The first tattoo of the large hall

is over the fireplace which itself is tattooed with leaves.

That represents the myth of the sun.

To the right and to the left you see the sun priests,

the fishermen of Villefranche.

The next tattoo shows the evening sun.

A woman sleeping on the sand.

Her head rests on the corner of a vestibule door.

In the shade, behind me, you will notice

one of the vestibule graffiti, "Night in its Chariot"

as in Amphitryon, where Night speaks with Mercury.

Back to the main hall. I didn't mention the myth of the moon:

a sleeping fisherman and a unicorn.

The hall echoes of a Greek grave,

because of the tattooless bay which surrounds the dining hall,

containing a tapestry which I will show you later.

We are in "Diana's Room".

This room shows the myth of Akteon.

Surprised by Diana and her nymphs,

Akteon turned into a stag.

Diana was surprised... Here is a bird.

Here is another bird.

Here is a third bird.

If one looks from a greater distance, the 3 birds disappear

in favor of the whole and form one of these voids

around which the significant lines form themselves,

because the insignificant lines must become significant.

They affect the patch-like style.

The tatooists of the doors are inspired by catalogues and postcards.

I respected this tradition but was inspired

by Renoir's Bathers.

Over the bed, a shepherd attends the mythicaI scene

indifferently.

The sun annoys us. It eats up the lines and the colors.

I will try to show them to you a bit better.

A tiny antechamber leads to the room we just visited.

A reaI maze of nooks and crannies

forces us to proceed like acrobats.

To the right of the sleeping reader...

Lots of sleeping on these walls...

The stairs lead to the rooms downstairs.

The vault which shows the genius of sleep

is the only painted fresco in the villa.

My work as a painter was not easy.

I forgot there were steps. I stepped back,

and more than once I was knocked over.

Dioscure on the right. I didn't manage the left one,

having no retreat. That will give us one sleeper less...

The deformation of the arm comes from having to film

Iying down, our back on the steps.

Another drawing based on a modeI by Renoir.

Santo Sospir was apparently a hunter.

Here is the Centaur of ancient Antipolis

on which the saint is mounted. Armed with his bow,

he marks his prey and his route.

The narrowness of the corridor keeps us from filming all of it.

One can only guess it from the fragments

across the doors.

Here is the saint on horseback on the centaur,

with his hair Pisanello style, falcon on his wrist.

We open a door that you already know.

Here is the billy-goat room, or room of sages.

There you see billy-goats, or sages over the beds.

Facing the beds, the goat-foot, unicorns and waves.

I forgot to tell you that the goat-foot is holding

the flat-bread, traditionaI sacrament of Grasse, Biot and Antibes.

Since the transformation of the Grimaldi museum,

Merchants from Antibes call it "Picasso's Manna".

Here is one flat-bread that hasn't been cut yet.

The tattoo of the next room

tells the myth of Narcissus.

The room is called the "Echo Chamber".

Mosquito-nets, alas, are indispensable.

In this room one sees Narcissus and at times the nymph Echo

who repeats her name tattooed in red.

It's the shade of those Nice beds.

Another room here, called "Initiation of the Bacchants".

Two young women are initiated by bacchants.

We go back all the way to the garden.

Facing us, Dionysus sleeps after having drunk.

It so often happens that tattoo art leads to painting.

In 1951, the villa was tattooed.

I started to paint. I hid my paintings.

My closets are full of pictures.

But the camera is the most indiscreet eye of all.

This painting represents the myth of Ulysses and the sirens.

Bound to the mast, Ulysses plugged his ears with wax.

The sirens danced and sang, not knowing they were defeated.

One of them arrives from faraway at great speed.

A bound sailor tightens his hat over his ears.

Again, a hidden painting.

This is the myth of Phaedra and Oenone.

Phaedra suffers. I change perspective.

I go over her face, expressing indifference, come what may.

It's unwise to smoke while filming.

When one no longer knows where to place the canvases,

they are hung on trees.

Orpheus attacked by the Bacchants.

Head of the dead Orpheus.

Here is the temptation of Christ on the mountain.

The Apple.

Satan is charming, of course. He tries to persuade.

Christ listens only with one ear. The other is elsewhere.

Here are painted bricks.

And a small canvas, "Jacob fighting the AngeI."

Another Orpheus: "Orpheus among the Leaves".

Here is a wheat field on a garden bed.

Here is golden Orpheus on the beach.

Nothing is more comfortable than these American pants

to carry cigarettes.

For lack of room, I often paint

in a studio under construction,

between the villa and the lighthouse.

I'm very proud when the workers show interest in my work

and forget about their own.

Same window, the other way round.

Time flies...

The studio is finished. I visit it with Francine Weisweiller.

If I were prone to jealousy,

I'd envy Edouard Dermit for his paintings.

Example of the storm of color in counter-type:

This painting which seems pale and in one single green tone

actually consists of very vivid and numerous greens.

It's the second time with Jean Marais

that one of my actors surprises me by starting to paint.

It's odd to see how very young painters

already oppose the abstract schooI as they develop.

At my age one no longer has the time to go on vacation.

Vacation is work.

When I write a play, I write a play.

When I paint, I paint.

When I draw, I draw.

I write, paint, draw.

But work never keeps me from moving from port to port,

between Villefranche, and its famous hoteI Welcome...

Between Villefranche and the beautifuI Porto Venere,

with its phantom houses, phantom rocks,

phantom church, its phantom of Lord Byron.

Work does not keep me from an occasionaI horse ride.

Work does not keep me from even riding a lion.

For the rest, my horse and my lion get along splendidly.

Work does not keep me from the occasionaI game of "boules".

This drink is a welcome substitute for cigarettes

in the editing rooms where we are forbidden to smoke.

I wanted to try and make flowers on the cape.

I started by painting them.

I quickly renounced this method.

I shall now show you a masterpiece of French handicraft

I don't mean myself, nor my work -

but the work of weavers at the Bourret Studio in Aubusson.

I have named them "harpists";

because they play harps with string and pattern.

Matisse warned me against the absence of patterns,

a result of the flat tones of modern tapestry.

Here, in one meter, I cannot differentiate

between the tapestries of Aubusson and the originaI.

The 3 by 3.5 meter tapestry

represents Judith after the death of Holopherne.

I've intentionally chosen a Roman Prize' subject.

Judith has stuck, she's no longer a woman,

but a walking sarcophagus, possessor of her own history.

She is carrying the head of her victim.

She comes across in the moonlight,

the sleeping guards, who were drugged by her maid.

The maid resembles some kind of insect,

still lit by the room where the beheading took place.

One of the bizarre qualities of counter-type Kodachrome

is that instead of a tapestry lit from the front,

one seems to be looking at stained glass lit from behind.

Here is Madame Weisweiller painting.

Naturally, the portrait was painted by Edouard Dermit.

Allow me to present the lady of the manor, in person.

She would like to thank you for your patience.

Here is the villa's mascot. We call him "the Master".

May he bring you luck, as he does for us.

I'd like to take this opportunity to thank Dr. Ricoux,

vice president of the cinema club of Nice of which I am

president of honor, who has helped us in our task.

Picasso, Matisse, Chagall and myself,

on this coast where Renoir used to live.

We have tried to defeat the destructive spirit of our time.

We have ornamented the surfaces

which men dream to demolish.

Perhaps the love of our work

will protect it from bombs.